


Testing, 1, 2, 3

by nowordswriter (eloquentelegance)



Series: Taming Pitch [5]
Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-25
Updated: 2013-01-25
Packaged: 2017-11-26 21:23:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/654549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eloquentelegance/pseuds/nowordswriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Because Jack has the gall to sleep in the Nightmare King's presence. Pitch returns the favor and tests his newly stolen dreamsand on the boy. The results were not what he expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Testing, 1, 2, 3

Jack sleeps in his presence. He finds the sprite curled up in corners and nodded off in niches, arms twined around his staff. Pitch wonders if it is an act of defiant bravery or careless idiocy. Or perhaps, neither. Perhaps it is an act of trust. For six to eight hours, Jack lowers all his defenses, forsakes any masks, and leaves himself vulnerable. Pitch abuses the oppurtunity with great relish.

He tests his stolen dreamsand on the boy. He taints the gold, dyes it dark and ink-like. It is a slow process of trial and error. The sand's first instinct is always a shape of comfort. There are snowflakes and snowmen on sled rides with friends. It it whimsical, baring the truth of Jack's youth. Overriding this instinct proves an arduous task. His attempts leave the boy with piercing headaches and a strange case of vertigo. But he never remembers. By mid-morning, the pain has receded and nothing remains but an aftertaste of the surreal, not quite pleasant, not quite frightening, not quite there. When night sets, Jack scurries off to some newfound nest and falls asleep. There is no fanfare, no complaints, no hesistancy.

It baffles Pitch. The sprite does not appear aware of his night activies (of course not, Pitch had been very careful not to loose his only guinea pig). But the boy had more than enough known causes for apprenhension. Namely, Pitch himself. Jack knows of his presence, in fact, strangely attuned to it. He knows what lies a mere stone's throw away. He knows the creature of shadow and fear that lurks by his side. He knows the Boogieman is here. Still, the boy chooses to rest at the foor of the Nightmare King's throne. And for six to eight hours, he leaves himself open, lets himself fall asleep.

If it is trust, Pitch thinks it ill-placed.

He repeats his experiments each night. By happy accident, he achieves success on a new moon. The sky bleeds a bleak black, the stars shrouded by clouds. There is no light, only darkness, and a touch of fear. It is the perfect night to breed a new horror. The sand warps and twists from the vague shape of a warm embrace, a portrait of a parent with child, to a slim silhoutte born of curdling blood and rattling bone. Pitch perverses Jack's dream and sees a likeness of him. He is Jack's worst nightmare.

But the newly crafted terror has only begun. Pitch watches, in rapt fascination, as a Jack, wrought from the same ink-dark sand, joins his likeness. Then inexplicably, his likeness disperses and it is no quiet passing. It is a nightmare, after all. The sand offers no sound but the locked open jaw of his likeness bears a tortured scream. Jack groans in his sleep, twisting and turning as his dream self reaches for the shadow, for Pitch. But the boy can do nothing, can not even reach him in time. His arm outstretched, fingers grasping, clawing at nothing but air. And then, the shadow is gone, melts away with not a trace left behind.

Jack wakes up screaming. He wakes up crying Pitch's name. By then, Pitch, the real-living-breathing-still-here Pitch has long left his side. He is the Boogieman. He will offer the boy no comfort. Instead, Pitch retreats to the deep and secret recesses of his home, where none dare trespass, where none even know of. It is a void, an abyss, filled with the cacophony of silence. Here, Pitch takes sanctuary. He burrows into nothing and broods, pondering over that infernal frost imp. He had thought he knew the winterling, knew the child best, knew enough to predict him. He had been mistaken.

Somehow, someway, Jack Frost always manages to surprise him.

Pitch finds himself remembering the dream before it mutated. It had been a portrait of a parent with child, perhaps even a father and son. And he thinks of Jack curled up in corners and nodded off in niches, but always somewhere close, always within an arm's reach. And Pitch can't remember the last time he tried to chase the boy away, can't remember the last time they traded blows, can't remember the last time the sprite left. Because he had long since given up imprisoning the boy. Yet here Jack stands, eternally at his side.

Pitch had thought the nightmare was him. He had been mistaken. Jack did not fear him but feared loosing him.

"Thrice-damned boy." Pitch whispers. "How am I to frighten you with that?"


End file.
